The man claimed he was simply trying to find vulnerabilities in the website

Sep 17, 2013 06:58 GMT  ·  By

A man believed to be connected to the Anonymous hacktivist movement was arrested by the FBI last week. Fidel Salinas Jr. is accused of hacking into the website of the Hidalgo County in Texas.

According to The Monitor, the attack took place on January 5, 2012, when the website’s administrators detected over 14,000 attempts to log in to the server.

The FBI was called in to investigate. Based on the IP, they traced the large number of attempts back to a house in Donna, Texas.

Here, they were told by the owner that her daughter’s boyfriend had moved in with them. Computers and other devices were seized at the time.

When interviewed on September 19, 2012, Salinas told authorities that he was simply trying to see if the website was vulnerable. He claimed he didn’t want to cause any damage, but to report potential issues to the site’s administrators.

In a later interview, on May 14, 2013, the man admitted to often chatting online with Anonymous hackers. He also admitted posting a message on Facebook to Sheriff Lupe Treviño, which ended with “We do not forgive, we do not forget.”